He Really Liked Filming His Dior Homme Ad

I think Robert Pattinson just convinced me that starring in a cologne ads makes you an Actor — with a capital A, said in the most snobby way possible. Robert Pattinson spoke about his commercial for Dior Homme with the Wall Street Journal and, I'm not even kidding, he somehow manages to make it sound like a fragrance ad is the first step to winning the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Pattinson's Dior Homme Eau for Men commercial was directed by Roman Gavras, who is best known for directing M.I.A.'s music videos for "Bad Girls" and "Born Free," the latter of which was pulled from YouTube due to it's graphic content. Pattinson says of working with Gavras, "I like trying to do ambitious things. That's what got me really enthusiastic about the campaign, that [Dior] wasn't shying away from anything." I would think most actors that end up doing endorsements like this are just in it for the money, maybe because they actually like the brand, so to hear the commercial talked about like this is surprising. Then again, he played Edward Cullen for several years so I imagine anything else would seem exciting.

The ad was released in Europe in September 2013 and will debut in the U.S. during the Winter Olympics. It is already available on YouTube and has 17 million hits because Twilight fans are creepy and probably stare at it all day long. Granted, the video actually does look pretty cool. I don't exactly know what the point of it is, but there's a lot of Pattinson making out with a blonde woman, some cigarette smoking, some sunglass wearing, and a part where the duo run through a fancy party. Really the whole thing just looks awesome because it's set to Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" and if the trailer for American Hustle proved anything, it's that Zeppelin plus people doing fun/up-to-no-good stuff always looks cool.

As for what else Pattinson has been working on, there's a "darkly comedic Hollywood satire ghost story" called Maps to the Stars directed by David Cronenberg, and he is also working on films with Anton Corbijn and Werner Herzog. He says, "This year, I'm trying to see what my niche is" which is good because that means his niche isn't vampires.